"Order View" button enabling viewers to see entries in EITHER oldest first OR newest first

[pacific_rain_acim]

Title:
"Order View" button enabling viewers to see entries in EITHER oldest first OR newest first

Area:
Journal Entry Page of journals

Summary:
Please create a drop down box, link or button that would change the appearance of a journal's main page from the current default "Newest Entry First" to an optional view of "Oldest Entry First"

Description:
Ok :) The idea is basically what ever they do on shopping sites and in windows, where you can hit a button at the top of a column and choose to have the most recent or most distant date first. (Or highest price & lowest price.)

1. Issue to improve: Any journal that is about a process, telling a story or play, history, building of anything, diary, ...
For instance - I just created a journal to be focused ONLY on what I'm learning as I study A Course In Miracles. I wish that viewers of that journal could choose to see the beginning of the journey first - and so the First entry on top, second in second place, etc. In other words, I wish this journal had an option to show up Oldest Entry First. People starting to look at A Course In Miracles in the future might find it comforting to see what someone thought and be able to talk about it as they were reading the same pages. Also if I like it, and read it again in the future, it would be easier to follow along with myself the second or fifth time around.

2. Why my solution is best: IDK about "best" but it's easiest for the journal owner. The only other one I can think of is to use an enormously long system of tags...a tag for every 10 pages or every date? Or the option below - of adding stock journal styles that automatically show up as Oldest Entry First.

3. Problems: there would be code that would change the links at the top of every journal, that would probably be hard. Someone would just wake up and see a new button or link "Order View" next to "Recent Entries" - but for you guys it would probably be a big code?

4. Other Ways: There could be a set of the stock journal layouts that were ONLY set to "Oldest First." We could just go in and search "Oldest First" and a set of them would come up. It would be harsh, as it takes a lot of time to get your fonts, colors, etc right. But we could do it over if it really mattered to us.

*****Unless you created an Oldest First alternate down at the bottom of the layout options page - where you now have a choice of how your columns appear.

I don't know which would be cleanest and easiest for you guys.
* added button/link to each journal that switches the view of dated entries from newest on top default, to Oldest First.

* set of journal layouts that are just coded to default the Oldest First in the entries section

* a template that can be layered on or removed (like those column options at the foot of the style page)

Poll #9497 "Order View" button enabling viewers to see entries in EITHER oldest first OR newest first

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 57

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This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
16 (28.1%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
13 (22.8%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
6 (10.5%)

(I have no opinion)
21 (36.8%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (1.8%)

Comments

[ratcreature]

When I want to read in order from the oldest first I go to the archive, select the oldest in day view, which orders the first posted that day on top, and then go to the next day with the arrow at the bottom.

[msilverstar]

I would love to see my reading page in posting order, especially in combination with a way to see new posts only.

I know there's a way to do it per-page, though I can't remember what it is, but that doesn't address the problem of which page to start at.

[axiom_of_stripe]

I really like this idea, but my understanding is that it's not easy to retrieve the posts in this way. My "with changes" is that this might be something which could be offered as a setting on the journal, perhaps only for paid users, so that it could be optimized behind the scenes for those journals.

If this is something which could be reasonably done for any journal, then I'd vote for it as-is.

[tyger]

I don't know what'd be easiest, but you could also have it as part of archive view; view-month-by-subject already has things in date order, which is nice, but would be more handy if you could view the entire entries like that. (Or even just an abstract, though that's getting away from the OP a bit.)

[katherine]

Oldest at the top in some way would be wonderful.

[marahmarie]

I don't know whether to vote for or against this since Dreamwidth has Archive nav in place in most styles (afaik) that will allow you to access the full journal's worth of entries from the front page, so if someone wants to start at say, Jan. 2005 and work their way up to today's post(s) by following those links, I think they can. But that might be very cumbersome and laggy compared to just reverse sorting everything, which is a great idea, but I don't know if I want to deal with another button or link that I'll have to hide via CSS if I don't want to use it (or else deal with another button or link that I'll have to style with CSS if I do want to use it). Ah, decisions!

Can anyone tell me if they agree or disagree with just using styles that support front-page full Archive nav instead? By that I mean this, which I think shows the years instead of the days (or maybe I'm wrong - it's been so long since I've seen it on anyone's journal that maybe it's the other way around)?

http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/options?group=modules --> type of calender display --> horizontal? Could that also work?

[pacific_rain_acim]

A with changes possibility might be to change the Entry Creation Page a little instead. What about adding a check box to disable the date setter, and adding a check box to enable a new module that gave the option of manually numbering the entries.

It's already possible to change the dates on entries, so the numbering module might not work very differently. But the maximum number of allowed journal entries in one journal would have to be determined, because we'd have to number backward, to keep the largest number on top in the journal. (That's how I see the latest/ newest date - a larger number.)

The worst problem I've read so far is the mention of the limitations of the cache of the posts/journals and the servers. If I understand the problem correctly, most journals people only go to the top page or two to catch up. This journal people would consistently be going to various sections and almost ALWAYS going deeply past the first few pages. Although...for this particular journal that will still be the case after a while, it will just be people going to the most recent entries on top and going all the way to the back and reading forward. So idk...?